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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25092820">Keyhole</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MobiusStripper/pseuds/MobiusStripper'>MobiusStripper</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Azula (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Dissociation, Gen, Mental Breakdown, Psychological Horror, Tragedy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 05:21:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>749</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25092820</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MobiusStripper/pseuds/MobiusStripper</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A young Azula spies through a locked door.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>91</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Keyhole</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mother doesn't like it when she spies, but that has never stopped Azula kneeling before a locked door, eye pressed to the keyhole, watching things not meant for her to watch.</p>
<p>Outside, a young woman is chained. She is silent, motionless, eyes glassy and bloodshot. Tears have painted kohl-tinged stripes over her pale cheeks (<em>like prison bars</em>). Her long black hair is wild, cut up all wrong and jagged, strewn across her face like a tattered curtain.</p>
<p>Azula observes her, and Azula<em> hates</em> her with a visceral disgust.</p>
<p>She is limp and motionless (<em>disgusting, pathetic, weak</em>) when the guards shackle her arms and legs together before removing the length of chain that binds her to a metal grate), and for the first time, Azula notices two figures standing nearby, watching. Their expressions betray a mixture of pity and horror, yet they do not intervene. For a moment, she mistakes the young man for her brother, but that is illogical; there is an eerie resemblance, but this man is much too old to be Zuko, and the left side of his face is badly scarred, as if someone has burned it. The other one, the young woman with the long brown hair, is a waterbender, though Azula cannot say how she knows that because she has never seen a waterbender before.</p>
<p>So captivated is she watching them carry this woman away — trying to understand why a small army of guards is needed to take away this pitiful creature (<em>disgusting, pathetic, weak</em>), why the waterbender and the man who looks a bit like Zuko carry themselves so vigilantly, as if bracing for a fight (even as the man wipes tears from his eyes) — that Azula does not even notice her mother there until she feels the hand on her shoulder.</p>
<p>Azula feels her face set into a defiant scowl in anticipation of her mother's rebuke, but when she turns, instead of the well-worn mask of vexed disapproval, she finds a face heavy with sorrow. Her mother's grip on her shoulders is not harsh and tense (<em>the way it always is, as if she can barely keep from sinking in her fingernails</em>) but tender, gentle, soft (<em>the way she is with Zuko</em>).</p>
<p>"Don't watch that, sweetheart," her mother whispers quietly, and tears run down her face, leaving kohl-tinged stripes. She pulls Azula into her arms, pressing her daughter's small face into the silk folds of her robe. "You don't have to watch anymore."</p>
<p>(And Azula is suddenly aware of something very wrong, and the blood is pounding in her ears too loudly and too rapidly, and there is a scream somewhere inside her trying to find its way out.)</p>
<p>"<em>Shhhh</em>," her mother whispers, stroking her hair (<em>the way she never did</em>). "You don't have to look out there. I'm here, now. I'm here. You don't have to watch that anymore."</p>
<p>There is a great, heavy, metallic sound at her back, and Azula rips away from her mother, spinning around to see the door she had knelt before moments ago opening up, clanging and creaking and scraping against the floor. It reveals behind it nothing but darkness, and then darkness steps across the threshold.</p>
<p>Azula turns to run, but there are chains on her ankles and her wrists, and she tries to call her fire, but she can't <em>move</em>, can't <em>breathe</em>, and the darkness is <em>eating</em> her. The scream trapped inside her has broken free, and it's unraveling her lungs, reverberating off of every surface, flooding the air until the darkness rears up and devours it. The darkness that is now creeping like vines from the doorway, engulfing the walls, ceiling, floor, coming for <em>her</em>, and she is<em> chained</em>, and she can't run away, can't call her fire, can't breathe, <em>can't run away, can't run</em>—</p>
<p>Last of all, the blackness closes in around her mother's grief-stricken face. "<em>I'm sorry I couldn't save you,</em>" it whispers, lingering like a pale moon with nothing to illuminate, just before it vanishes. Azula's knees hit hard stone, and the chains are ice cold, and the door scrapes and creaks and clangs shut, followed by another door behind it and another behind that one, until she is buried a thousand doors deep.</p>
<p>All alone, face shrouded within the dark curtain of her ruined hair, throat raw from screaming, cheek pressed to the cold, hard floor of her cell, Azula sobs and pleads and cries out for her mother, and it echoes and echoes and echoes.</p>
<p>
  <em>Disgusting. Pathetic. Weak.</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <i>despair came riding on the crest of a big black wave<br/>and I was like a child<br/>looking for a safe place to hide<br/>despair was standing with its jaws open wide<br/>and it swallowed me whole in to the big black night<br/></i>
</p>
<p>- Mirel Wagner, "Despair"</p></blockquote></div></div>
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